


In Time, All Things

by anax imperator (anax)



Series: Objective Uncertainty, Held Fast [1]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Gen, probably the most worksafe thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anax/pseuds/anax%20imperator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nero had hoped he'd see Dante again one day, but hadn't really expected it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Time, All Things

Nero was just sitting down to dinner when a knock came at the door. As he walked into the foyer to answer it, his right palm began to tingle, and a bright blue-white glow from his devil-bringer made him glance down at it. He could barely look at it, it was so bright.

It was a reaction he hadn't seen in it for ... a while, but it put him immediately on edge. "I'm coming," he called when the knock repeated, and he quietly picked up his revolver from the table. When he opened the door, he pointed the gun into the breach and cocked it in one motion.

An instant later, he found himself looking down the barrels of two semi-automatics, pointed at _him_ in answer. "Ooooh," said the visitor. _"Somebody's_ happy to see me!"

Nero lowered his weapon, a little stunned. "Dante," he said.

He looked ... exactly like Nero remembered, right down to the sword on his back and the cock-eyed grin. "How's it going?" asked Dante, spinning his guns and then sliding them into his coat.

"It's ... okay ..." Something in Nero's brain reset and he asked, "What are you doing here?"

The man laughed, actually laughed. "What am I _doing_ here?" he echoed. "Well, right now I'm standing in your doorway wondering why there's no welcome mat, but maybe that was deliberate." He paused. "Should I go?"

"No, no," said Nero. That hadn't been very friendly, had it? He was just so surprised. "No, come in, come in."

He moved aside and made an after-you with the revolver in his hand, and Dante strolled in. "Um," said Nero, "sorry about the mess. I ... wasn't really expecting company."

"No," said Dante. "I'm sorry to drop in on you like this. I should have called but it turns out I don't know your number."

Nero put his gun back down on the table, and then self-consciously began to pick up some of the unwashed dishes that had been collecting around the living room for the past couple of weeks. Dante gave no indication that he noticed or cared; he simply unhitched the sword off his back and flopped down on the couch, and kicked a foot up onto the coffee table like he was in his own house. "Where's your girlfriend?" he asked. "Not here, I guess. Figured you two'd be married by now."

"No," said Nero, and despite his best efforts to put peace to that kind of thing the question gave him a deep pang. He carried a stack of dishes into the kitchen. "We're not married. I don't know where she is, probably at home." And then, as much to change the subject as because it was true, he added, "Hey, I was just about to have dinner. Are you hungry?"

"Is the sea wet? Am I the most awesome person ever to grace this island?"

Cocky bastard. "So that would be _no,_ then," said Nero.

"Kid, you cannot comprehend how famished I am. I've been on the road since this time day before yesterday."

Fortunately Nero had made chowder with the intention of leftovers the next day, so there was enough for a second person; had Dante shown up a day earlier or after, it might have been hard to feed him on short notice. Dante followed Nero into the kitchen, and Nero pushed his own, untouched bowl in front of the devil hunter and went to ladle out a second for himself. "So, seriously, what's up? Why the visit?"

He wanted to hear the words, _I just wanted to see how you were doing,_ but of course that wasn't what he got. "I'm on business," said Dante, "but nobody will rent me a room. I was hoping I could crash on your couch so I don't have to sleep on the sidewalk."

Nobody would rent him a room? "What do you mean?"

Dante wolfed some of the chowder like a starving man, then said, "I mean I checked all the hotels on the island and they all turned me away. Something about capping their high priest in the face." He laughed. "The only thing I regret is not capping him _twice,_ but apparently that's made me unwelcome here."

"Oh, yeah." That seemed like so long ago, like another lifetime almost. "I told people what really happened but a lot of them don't believe it. A lot of people here still think His Holiness was a good man, and that the Savior was, well, saving the town." And Nero didn't usually feel like getting into arguments about it, especially when the scapegoat was Dante, who lived far away and would probably never visit. But now he _was_ visiting, and Nero felt kind of guilty for not setting the record straight sooner and giving the man the chance to stay in one of the inns like a normal person.

But Dante didn't seem inclined to hold a grudge. Between bites he said, "I'll try not to be any trouble for you."

"It's fine, it's no trouble. I just ..." Nero groped for words, but could only find the ones that were the most weak. "I just never really expected to see you again."

Dante scoffed. "If this job hadn't come up, I would have come calling soon anyway. Been thinking about you lately. Was wondering if you were doing okay."

It was so much what Nero wanted that he wasn't sure he believed it; he _wanted_ to believe it, though. It lit a small ember of warmth within that cold empty space inside him. "I'm doing okay," he said, sitting himself down with the second bowl of chowder.

* * *

After dinner they went into the living room and discussed what had brought Dante out to Fortuna again after almost two years: demons, of course, or at least the rumor of them. The rumor put them on the east side of the island, in or around the fishing village that supplied Fortuna with most of its seafood, including the fish and crab that had gone into the chowder Nero and Dante had eaten that very night. The story went that the demons were running people off from a small and abandoned churchyard after dark. Nobody had been hurt or killed yet, but the residents were frightened and feared, for good reason, that the otherworldly visitors were up to no good. 

"I thought it was funny when they called me," said Dante at the end. "Figured they'd hire the local boy instead."

"I'm not a devil hunter," Nero told him, and he didn't look at the older man while saying it. He wasn't sure if he was ashamed, or what he felt, but it certainly didn't feel good to say it. "I have a job at the docks. It has nothing to do with demons." He rubbed his right thumb over his fingers; his hand was still glowing brightly, tingling, warning him about the powerful devil sitting on his couch.

There was a momentary pause, and then Dante said, "Well, it's not for everyone. You doing all right at least?"

"Yeah," said Nero, still not looking Dante in the face. "I'm doing fine. It's a good job, pays okay. I guess you'll head to the village tomorrow?"

"That's the plan." Dante shifted, leaning back on the couch, spreading his elbows across the back and taking up as much space as possible. "What's the best way to get there?"

"The coast road. You can borrow my car if you promise not to destroy it." To forestall any temptation to inquire further into his wellbeing, Nero asked, "What's new with you?" and tried to turn the conversation around to Dante instead.

It worked. Dante led an interesting life and wasn't shy, and within two minutes Nero had him going off on a long, long tangent about the people he lived with back home. He seemed to surround himself with women, but they gave him a lot of grief; it might have sounded like griping except that Dante was able to laugh about it, and so he told the little stories more like they were jokes than things that aggravated him.

Nero encouraged him at first just to make him talk about himself instead of asking more after the younger man, but after a little while Nero's interest was no longer feigned but genuine. The things Dante described were legitimately engaging, and he had a way of speaking, of canting his tone and moving his hands, but it was more than that: the things he described were _true._ He really had these friends back home, they really messed with him (with _him,_ with the son of Sparda) and he really let them get away with it and found it hilarious instead of enraging. Nero thought that he would probably find it enraging to be continually beaten at cards or pool, or have his food taken right out of his hand, or his stuff rearranged in the name of "cleaning up the place."

But Dante liked them, put up with them, thought they were great instead of annoying, and Nero started to sort of like them, too, through the devil hunter's words. It sounded ... nice, in a way, to be comfortable enough around someone to kid around like that - and have that someone comfortable enough in return ...

That led to thoughts Nero didn't like at all, and so he cut Dante off with a wide, feigned yawn. "Sorry," he said. "What time is it? I have to work tomorrow." Dante was not offended at all, and apologized in return for keeping Nero up.

They made plans, for Dante to drop Nero off at the dock before heading up the coast road. Nero said not to worry about picking him back up, and that he would get a coworker to give him a ride home. That probably wouldn't happen, actually, but Dante didn't have to know that.

He went to bed with his imagination full of Dante's tales, his own life feeling painfully lonely by comparison.

But it wasn't that feeling that made it hard to get to sleep. It was instead, for some reason, the knowledge that Dante was out there asleep on his couch. _The son of Sparda_ ... something itched inside Nero, something that had become quiet of late, but which was maddeningly familiar. He looked up at the ceiling in the dark. The Order had planned to use Dante essentially as fuel. Dante had power. Dante _was_ power.

Nero's devil bringer was still glowing, fainter now that Dante wasn't in the same room but still more brightly than was normal for it. Nero draped a fold of the blanket over it to dim it, and closed his eyes.

* * *

He set his alarm half an hour early, so that he could shower and then give Dante time to do the same thing before leaving. He offered his guest part of his breakfast, but Dante declined. "No offense on your cooking, kid," said Dante, "but I think I'd rather pick something up in town on the way out."

The older hunter gave Nero a queer look when he started to wrap up his right arm and hand. Dante didn't say anything, but Nero felt the question behind the look, and answered it. "I probably don't have to," he said. "Everyone knows. I'm just more comfortable this way." A large glove covered his palm and fingers, thick leather muffling the glow; he wound a bandage up his forearm to dim the light, and then turned his sleeve down over it. There was no way to truly conceal the malformation at his elbow, and it bent his sleeve in odd ways.

They left a bit earlier than Nero would have normally, and Dante drove; when they got to the docks, Nero described how to reach the coast road. "Just be back by tomorrow morning, okay?" he said as he got out.

"No problem," said Dante, and then he grinned. "And I won't destroy the car. I _swear."_

Nero had only said that as a kind of lame joke, but from the way Dante spoke as he issued this promise Nero now wondered if there might be a real danger of that happening. "Yeah," he said. "Please don't. This is my only car and I need it."

"It's perfectly safe with me," Dante assured again, and Nero closed the door and let him drive off.

He watched the car's taillights dwindle and turn the corner. Nero had what would undoubtedly be a full day ahead of him, a day of ... loading and unloading shipping crates, checking manifests and bills of lading, inspecting cargo ... dealing with the other guys. Dante was going to ... go kill some devils, probably.

That wasn't the life that Nero wanted. He'd had the opportunity - he _still_ had the opportunity, really - but that wasn't how he wanted to live his life. But damn him if he didn't yearn anyway; he could remember how it had felt, vivid as a nightmare, to see and feel and _know_ where his opponents were and what they were doing, how to turn to avoid their claws, where to aim, how to cut. To be so completely inside his own skin, completely in tune with the weapons he held, completely alive.

He remembered beating devils down to the ground, pounding his sword into them until they stopped moving, and sometimes not stopping even then.

He remembered fighting Dante, trying to kill him.

Had there been some way to call Dante back, Nero probably would have done it. There wasn't, so he turned and walked toward the office to clock in.

* * *

None of Nero's coworkers would agree to give him a ride at the end of the day; it was what Nero had been expecting, but he asked anyway on the off chance. He wound up walking home. No big deal, it was only nine miles and there was no time limit in the evening. Probably for the best anyway, not to be confined in the small space of a car with another person even for twenty minutes.

It ended up being kind of nice, because the weather was good and he had to walk through town, and a lot of people were out taking care of business or socializing. A couple of them would even greet him and smile when they saw him, and nobody made a point of crossing the street when they saw him coming anymore. Nero kept his right hand in his coat pocket, and that itching urge to violence was quiet again.

Dante arrived shortly after Nero got home, which was somewhat earlier than Nero had been expecting. "All the demons dead?" he asked when the front door opened, and tried to bury the all-too-familiar feeling the question brought him.

"Nope," said Dante. "And I don't think I'm going to kill them either."

"What?" Nero came out of the kitchen; he'd removed all of the dishes from the living room and the dishwasher was started. He'd sort of expected to have a few hours to finish picking up the place, but at least he'd gotten that much done. "Why not?"

"They say they're just trying to open a portal to get home. Haven't hurt anyone yet and they swear they won't. I ... sort of believe them."

Nero wasn't sure what to think about this, but before he could voice any of the _what the hell, you're a devil hunter, aren't you?_ thoughts in his head, Dante gave him a grin. "Let's go grab something to eat."

"I was just about to ..."

"Like I said this morning, I got nothing against your cooking, but seriously, I need a pizza like, yesterday."

Dante promised to buy, so Nero went along; the car was, to his silent relief, undamaged. There were three pizza places in Fortuna but only one that would let Nero in. "Try to stay inconspicuous," Nero told Dante as he parked on a side street. "I don't want to get thrown out."

"You get thrown out of a lot of places, kid?" The devil hunter's tone was irritatingly sympathetic; he slid his sword into the car's back seat without prompting.

"Not anymore, and I don't want it to start back up."

They were seated in a corner booth without a problem. The hostess gave Nero a warm smile and didn't even seem to recognize Dante at all. The restaurant was reasonably busy, full of chatter, laughter; it had been a while since Nero had eaten out like this. While Dante perused the menu, Nero asked, "So what are you going to do about them, if you're not going to kill them?"

"Was thinking I'd give them a hand, send them on their way."

That sounded sketchy to Nero. "Is that a good idea?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because ..." Nero groped for an answer. "Because they're demons."

"Here's the thing about devils, kid," said Dante, and he sounded little tired when he said it. "They're kind of like animals. They can't help what they are, they didn't ask to be born that way any more than you did."

Nero frowned, but he kept his sour thoughts to himself.

"You can't hate an animal for doing its thing. You can't hate a predator for killing. That's its nature. If you've got a ... a lion, say, that's killing and eating people, you have to put it down. You can't let an animal go around killing people. But most lions don't kill any human, and the best thing to do is just keep them away from people so they're not tempted. Keep the humans and the animals separated, and they can each do their own thing and nobody gets hurt. Same thing with devils."

"You think if you just send them back, nobody will get hurt?" Nero was very skeptical, and the skepticism leaked into his tone. "Wouldn't it be better to just kill them? Safer?"

Dante waved that away. "They're weak little things. Your girlfriend could probably beat up the lot of them. If they screw with me, I'll take 'em out."

That was painful, although it was obvious that Dante hadn't meant anything by it. It hurt enough that for Nero to say quietly, before he could stop himself, "She's not my girlfriend." He kept his eyes on the menu, not wanting to deal with whatever Dante thought of that. "So how are you going to send them back?"

A long hesitation, and then Dante said, "I want to call Trish, and get her to bring a devil arm here. I'll use the power to open the portal they need."

Nero wasn't sure what that meant. "I don't get it." He glanced up, and thankfully the quick subject change had worked and there was no trace of a question in Dante's expression.

"I have a bunch of them back home. They're ..." Dante thought a moment. "Kind of like demon souls in weapon form. My sword is one, actually, but there's no way I'm using it for something dumb like portal-opening."

"Why not?"

Dante smiled. It was not a nice smile. "It was a gift from my dad. That would be disrespectful."

"Oh." Nero hadn't thought of it that way. Yamato was a devil arm, Nero knew, although he'd never understood it before. He guessed that Dante wouldn't want to use Yamato, either. "So you can get one of the ... the ordinary ones that you keep then?"

"Sure, Trish'll bring me one, and that'll be that."

The waiter came then, brought them their drinks and took their order, and then Nero asked, "How do you know all this stuff?"

"I had an interesting upbringing," said Dante, but rather than start talking about that, he instead leaned back, draped his arms over the back of his seat, and said what Nero had been evading since yesterday. "What happened to you, kid?"

"What do you mean?" Nero knew exactly what he meant, and looked away again.

He expected Dante to push, to say it again and press for an answer, but that didn't happen; he was just silent, waiting, and eventually Nero gave in. "Some things happened," said Nero at the tabletop. Again he expected to be prompted, and again Dante was silent, and somehow that was more incriminating than any question. "I'm ... kind of temperamental. Kyrie couldn't deal with it, and I decided it wasn't fair to ask her to try." He slurped some of his coke.

"Ahhh-hhhh," said Dante, as though that made everything make sense. "That's a shame. She's a cute kid, seemed like she brought out the best in you."

"Yeah, that's not true." Nero took another drink, trying to work down the tightness in his throat; it was painful, physically painful. "And even if it were, she deserves better than to just be a means to bringing out the best in me."

Again Dante fell silent for a bit, but this time he broke the silence himself. "So you decided you'd rather be a regular guy?"

"I _am_ a regular guy, Dante." Nero slid his right hand under the table. "I just ... have a little ... deformity. That's all." Like a crooked foot, or a cleft lip. Something unsightly, but which wasn't a referendum on his normality, or his ... humanity.

Starting to feel that staring at the table was childish and maybe even cowardly, Nero lifted his gaze and gave Dante a confrontational stare instead. Dante, however, didn't look confrontational at all; the lack of fight on the other side of the table flustered Nero, and he started to play with his fork, tapping it against the table and moving it through his fingers.

"Look," said Nero, annoyed. "What do you want from me?"

"I didn't say anything," said Dante. "What you want to do with yourself is your business. I was just curious."

Nero was angry now, and aware that it was for no good reason at all, which only made him angrier. And this was exactly the kind of problem he stayed away from people to avoid, that had run him into trouble with Kyrie and with everyone. "Yeah," he said. "It's my business."

Before he could change the subject again Dante did it for him, saying, "I want to call Trish after dinner. It'll probably take her only a day or so to get here, she travels faster than I do, and then I'll be out of your hair."

"Right." Then Dante would be out of his hair. And back out of his life.

Possibly forever.

That would be a good thing ... right?

Their food arrived and provided a temporary distraction; just before it was placed on the table Nero decided he wasn't hungry, but as soon as he saw it and smelled it he changed his mind. Some of the anger dissipated as he ate, and he started to feel better.

He wasn't sure why, but he eventually said, "Do you think there's any way I could come with you when you go to send those demons back?"

"Sure. We can arrange that." The words were rushed; Dante was _inhaling_ the pizza. Nero had no idea how he was managing to chew his food at the speed he was devouring it. "Any special reason?"

"No."

"It should be interesting. Especially if they're dicking with me." Dante looked thoughtful around a bite of pizza, and then said, "I kind of believe their story, but not completely. They're weak, but they're smart, and they might just be telling me whatever it takes to keep me from gutting them." He paused, and added, "But they haven't harmed any humans yet. That's the reason I almost believe them."

If they were dicking with Dante, Dante would kill them, and Nero could easily imagine how that would go down. The older devil hunter would hardly need help, especially if the demons were as weak as Dante claimed, but Nero wanted to be there, to see it if it happened. _To smell the blood._ Beneath the table he clenched his right hand; it still tingled in proximity to Dante, a constant warning he didn't need.

But, as he thought about it, he remembered why his devil bringer reacted that way, and he asked, "How do you do it?"

"I told you, I'll use a devil arm to wedge open a portal. It won't be too hard. If you're really coming with me, I'll show you. It'll be unpleasant, that's all."

"No," said Nero. "I meant ..." He rubbed his right thumb over his fingertips; the glove muted the sensation. "Nevermind."

He had the idea that he might ask later, when they weren't in public, but somehow Dante caught the drift of the question and it apparently didn't matter to him that much. His voice softened when he said, "I was born like this, kid."

"But how do you ..." Nero couldn't find the words. _How do you live with yourself, how do you keep from killing everyone?_ He couldn't say that.

Again, he didn't need to. "When you have a ..." Dante tasted his words. "... a _mixed heritage,_ that means you can pick the half you like best, or take the best of each. I decided when I was a kid myself that I'd rather take after my mom's side of the family. My mother was human, you know. I wanted to be like a human."

Knowing what Nero did about Dante's family, and his abilities, this was kind of an unexpected idea. "Why?" Nero asked. He glanced to one side, noticed that two of the people at the next table were somewhat obviously eavesdropping, and he stared at them until they looked away.

Oh, well. Someone who looked like Dante, talking openly in a crowded restaurant about _wanting_ to be _like_ a human, it was probably unavoidable that someone would notice.

The older hunter polished off one last piece of pizza, leaving two still on the pan for Nero. "I saw how my dad's ... people ... could be," said Dante, and if he noticed the audience he didn't give any indication. "Dad was a good person. He never used his strength selfishly, and he was always willing to jump in to defend the powerless. But I learned pretty young that most of them aren't like that." He paused. "Humans can be really evil sometimes, and I think that human evil is worse because it's a choice, it's a decision, whereas devils just have this hunger clawing inside them all the time and it's hard to resist. But it's that freedom of choice that I like. That's what I wanted. To make choices for myself." A sip of his drink, and then he said, "My old man made a choice. I've seen a dozen or so other devils make choices. But it isn't easy for them."

_Hunger._ That was the word that stuck out for Nero. Not choice or freedom, but ... _hunger._ He took the second-to-last slice of pizza and bit down. He wasn't hungry anymore, not really ... not like that.

"My mom told me once," Dante was saying, "that there is no such thing as destiny. I believe it. So I made my choice, to be as human as possible. That's how I get through the day."

Nero thought about that as he finished off the last of the pizza, but he soon concluded that this was as much bullshit. He was _trying_ to be human, and it wasn't working. He still had this temper, and now he even had a good word to apply to that itch that was once again crawling through the back of his mind. That craving - _hunger_ \- for violence, for blood. For power. Dante had all the power a devil could want, so of _course_ he didn't have that same urge, or if he did it was sated and probably didn't bother him. He could afford to _be as human as possible._ He could afford to do or be anything he liked.

Dante couldn't help him, obviously, and it had been stupid of Nero to look to him for help. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

When he looked up Dante had a weird little smile, but it wasn't a happy smile. It irritated Nero. "What?" he demanded.

"I didn't say anything."

"Well, you're _thinking_ it. So what is it?"

"I didn't say anything," said Dante again. Then he called for the check, and Nero fumed.

Outside the restaurant, Nero couldn't hold it in any longer. "What the hell do you want from me, Dante?" he asked. "I'm not like you. I can't _be_ like you!"

"Nobody asked you to, kid." Dante stopped, turned to face Nero. He didn't look angry, but ... something else. Disappointed, maybe? It was hard to tell.

Nero would have preferred anger; _he_ was angry. "I'm not a devil hunter. So what?"

"So ... nothing." Dante spread his hands. "What's up? Why are you yelling at me?"

"I'm a _human being,"_ Nero told him. He honestly didn't know why he was yelling; he didn't know why he was angry. He didn't know why he had this temper in the first place. He didn't know why he felt like he was being judged here, because Dante hadn't said anything judgmental at all. But he _was_ angry, and he _did_ feel judged, and so he said, "It's easy as hell for _you_ to say, just make a _choice_ to be as human as possible! You're the son of _Sparda._ You have every possible choice in the world! I'm just ..."

Something clattered and Dante's eyes flicked to the source of the sound behind Nero, and Nero lost his train of thought when he realized what he's just said, out loud, and that someone else following them out of the restaurant had heard it.

It was Helen and Jake Sutton; the box containing their leftover pizza had fallen from Helen's nerveless fingers. Jake, gazing straight at Dante, said, "Is that true?"

_Damn._ These two were _devout._ "Hey, um," said Nero, feeling kind of ill. "I was kidding, right?"

Jake Sutton ignored him. "Is it true?" he asked Dante again.

"Ahhh," said Dante. "What would you prefer to believe? Why don't we just go with that."

"My Lord!" cried Helen, and she dropped to her knees and began to pray. Jake took a moment longer, but then also went down on his hands and knees, reciting a prayer to Sparda that Nero had heard a thousand times (and recited himself a thousand more, back when he'd been devout, too).

Dante sighed, looked uncomfortable, and said, "Ahhh, shit," and Nero got that horrible yawning feeling in his belly that told him that he had, once again, fucked up.

* * *

They got away from Helen and Jake by getting into the car and driving off, but not before Helen attempted to touch Dante; he neatly evaded her efforts, but was clearly unhappy about it.

"I'm sorry," said Nero as soon as they were underway. Dante rolled down his window and draped his arm out, and leaned back in the seat. "I don't know ..." _what made me say that_ "... I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," said Dante. "I was kinda hoping that wouldn't get out around here, but it was probably just a matter of time." Then he cocked his head and asked, "How'd you find out?"

"Some things His Holiness said about you ... and me actually. It made me go digging in the Order's research facility after you left." He turned a corner, away from downtown. "Didn't find out anything about me, but they'd collected plenty on you."

Dante laughed. "A fan club!"

"I suppose." That's not what Nero would have called it. "I mean, I knew from the beginning that you weren't ... completely human, but it was ... interesting to find out where the other part came from." He hesitated, and said, "I don't know why I said that, even. I don't know why I was angry." He was still angry, really, the anger lessened by the knowledge of his fuck-up but still present, rattling around like a sharp-edged marble inside him.

"I know why," said Dante quietly, but when Nero asked he would say nothing more, only shake his head.

It wasn't until they reached Nero's place and were in the door that Dante would speak further. "You said you have a temper problem?" he asked. "One like you're showing now, maybe?"

"Maybe," said Nero, sullen.

Dante nodded. "It's the devil in you."

Sure. Nero snorted. "Yeah, okay," he said, irritated now beyond measure. "I sure am glad _you're_ here to fill me in. Why didn't _I_ think of that?"

"Well," said Dante. "Why _didn't_ you think of that?"

Nero stared for a moment. What a _dick!_ "I _have,_ Dante, and that isn't it! I'm not an idiot." And it was beyond insulting for this guy, who knew nothing about him, to make that assumption.

Although ... it actually felt kind of good to have a target for his anger for once, rather than just simmering in it for no reason at all.

"How do you figure?"

"Because I've always been like this!" Nero took off his coat and threw it at the coatrack next to the door; he missed and it crumpled onto the floor. "It's ... gotten worse, okay, since the thing happened with my arm, but I've _always been like this."_ He grabbed his coat back up off the floor, angrily shook it out and hung it up properly.

When he turned around the look Dante was giving him struck him as oddly perplexed, like this answer confused him or something. "What?" Nero demanded.

Dante shook his head. "Of course you've always been like this," he said.

"Right," said Nero, confused himself now by the agreement. "So it can't be the demon in me, okay?"

Another long moment of staring silence, until Nero again said, _"What?_ What the hell are you looking at me like that for?"

"Nero," said Dante slowly. "What is it you think you are?"

"A guy. With a ... a ... " Nero groped for words. "A _growth_ or something." He shook his fist, the knobs and scales of it concealed beneath the heavy glove. "Or a, a demon or something living in my arm."

"You _are_ a demon," said Dante.

Nero gave half a snort, not amused. "No shit."

"I mean, you're not a devil because your arm looks like that. You were born one. You've always been one."

What bullshit. "That's crap. I was born normal. I'm a human being!"

"When'd your hair turn white?" asked Dante.

The question gave Nero pause, and he ran a hand through his hair. Usually he didn't think about it; he'd been teased for it when he was younger, but it was just haircolor after all. His eyes flicked to Dante's hair. "Why?" he asked.

"I was born with mine white," said Dante. "You were too, weren't you?"

"That doesn't mean anything." It was just _hair color._

The curve of Dante's lip was knowing and cynical. "Sure thing, kid."

"It doesn't mean anything," Nero insisted.

He wanted to fight about it, but Dante just nodded agreeably. "Can I use your phone?"

"... sure." The abrupt change of topic took Nero off-guard again and broke the thread of his anger; he hooked a thumb toward the kitchen. "Phone's in there."

Dante went to make his call, and Nero threw himself down onto the couch and fumed. It was just _hair color_ for fuck's sake. He'd grown up with a guy had brown hair all winter and near-blond all summer. One of the neighbors down the street had developed a streak of silver as she got older, but the rest of her hair was still raven-black. _Hair color._ What the fuck ever.

Dante's voice rumbled in the kitchen, laughing once, saying things that Nero could only half-hear and couldn't understand. This was all so stupid, and Nero felt kind of stupid for letting it get to him. He peeled off the glove that hid his devil bringer, flexed his fingers, glared moodily at the bright warning glow. _This_ was demonic, and he sure as hell hadn't been born with it.

Eventually Dante came back out into the living room with his wallet in his hand, and he picked a ten-dollar bill out of it and dropped it on the table. "Sorry that took so long."

"You don't have to pay me back," said Nero. Ten bucks was way more than that call was going to cost.

"Humor me," said Dante. "I know I'm aggravating you, and I'm sorry about that. I can go find somewhere else to stay if you want."

"No." Even if there had been anywhere else for Dante to go, Nero would have resisted this; he'd been raised to be hospitable, dammit. As it was, the devil hunter would probably wind up on a park bench or something, which made it even less acceptable. "You can stay here. I want you to stay."

There was no argument to that. "Trish said she'll be here as soon as she can. Probably day after tomorrow."

"Then you'll go help out those demons," said Nero. "Or kill them, or whatever." And then Dante would leave.

"No," said Dante, with a crooked smile. "Then _we'll_ go deal with the demons."

* * *

Dante stayed at Nero's place the next day while Nero went to work; he barely woke up while Nero was getting ready to leave, and was asleep again before the younger man went out the door. That gave Nero a little stab of jealousy - of course Dante didn't have to stick to a schedule, he didn't have a nine-to-five job - but he crushed it down. The job at the docks paid the bills, and what else could one want from a job?

No one ever spoke to him at work unless there was some kind of need, which meant that Nero had a lot of time to himself. Normally he liked that, it made it easier to work with these people who were _(so much less than him)_ kind of dicks to him, but today it meant that Dante's ... allegations, of the night before, harried him as he worked. Three large shipments of fabric were going out today to the mainland, and they needed to be packed into a shipping container; this was normally Nero's job, but with three shipments going together Braxton helped him out.

It was mainly physical labor: stacking boxes onto pallets, wrapping them into packages, labeling and registering them on the inventory, then calling over Braxton with the forklift to move them into the shipping container. Aside from the paperwork, to ensure that the shipment matched the bill of lading, there was nothing to occupy his mind, and so his mind occupied itself.

"What does he know," Nero muttered under his breath, more than once. What _did_ Dante know? Nothing. Prior to the day before yesterday they'd never talked to one another or anything. Dante knew nothing about him, except what could be learned by trading bullets and swordwork. Nero had been born human, born _normal._ There'd been nothing strange about him growing up, no strength beyond what any normal person could expect, nothing terrible lurking within him, and certainly no glowing body parts.

His demon hand was wrapped and gloved, and no glow betrayed it now. It had been contact with devils that had done this to him, somehow. He hadn't been born with it.

His temper had nothing to do with the demon ... infection, or whatever it was, except insofar as the intrusion had made it worse. That constant hunger - how had Dante phrased it? - _clawing_ inside him, it aggravated him, shortened his fuse the way a needling pain might, but his fuse had never been that long to start.

Dante didn't know him, and Dante couldn't help him. By lunch time, Nero knew he just had to accept that. He'd hoped ... but that hope had been misplaced.

The disappointment could crush him if he let it, but his constant irritability would help with that, he knew. Anger had a way of chasing away other emotions. He just had to give into it for a while.

At quitting time, someone was waiting for Nero at his car, leaning against the hood. It was Henry Sutton. "Nero!" he called, smiling in that nervous way that people sometimes smiled when Nero was nearby. "I need to ask you something."

"No," said Nero. Here was a good excuse to be angry. "Your parents can't come to my house and worship my guest."

"That wasn't what I was going to ask," said Henry.

"What?" Several the other guys, while not walking out _with_ Nero exactly, were nevertheless close enough to overhear. It was Hicks who spoke, but when Nero glanced over his shoulder they were all giving him strange looks.

Henry, unhelpfully, explained, "My parents think Nero has the son of Sparda at his house."

"They shouldn't take the things I say so literally," said Nero. Thankfully, his co-workers were just laughing, a little cruelly but Nero was okay with that as long as this story didn't get wind up passed around as truth. "Get off my car, Henry. Whatever you want, the answer is no."

"I just want to know who that guy really is." Henry did stand up straight, though, and got his rear off the car's fender. "Ma and Pa haven't prayed so hard since the demon invasion."

Nero opened the car door, and thought about getting in and just driving off, but he was annoyed and he thought maybe he could stop the rumor right here. "He's just someone I know," he told Henry. "A devil hunter from the mainland. He's here to take care of some demons in Carmen Village and none of the hotels would take him. That's all. He's crashing on my couch until the job is done."

"The hotels wouldn't take him?" asked Henry, frowning. "Why not?"

"I don't know!" Nero hadn't meant to shout; he took a breath. "I do know. But it doesn't matter." He got into the car and started it, and added, "Now get out of my way. Tell your parents he's just your average, run-of-the-mill devil hunter, and that's all he is."

"Sure," said Henry. He took a few steps back so Nero could pull out of his spot, and that was the end of it.

At least, that was the end of it until Nero got home.

The Suttons weren't among the probably ten people in Nero's driveway, but Nero had no doubt they would be along soon enough, as soon as they told the rest of their friends. The small crowd made way for his car, and Sarah Beth Longley, whose son had been one of Nero's friends before ... everything happened ... came up to him with hands clasped.

"Nero," she said. "Helen told me ..."

"I know what she told you," interrupted Nero. "She was listening in on something she had no business hearing and she misunderstood it. Do you hear me?" His voice rose with his anger. "All of you, do you hear me? Helen and Jake _misunderstood!_ He's just a devil hunter here on a job!"

"He's protecting us from the demons!" said Judith, who lived across the street. "Like his father!"

"No!" said Nero. He made a violent gesture at the gathered people, and shouted, "Go home! All of you! This is a big misunderstanding, that's all! Get out of here!"

They moved to the street, and Nero tried again to run them off but that was public property and they wouldn't go any farther. Judith actually started to pray toward Nero's place, and it wasn't like Nero was willing to hurt them or anything _(although that would be so easy)_. Disgusted, he went inside.

Dante was _still asleep on the couch._ Had he slept all day? Here was a good and _deserving_ target for the anger currently keeping the despair at bay; Nero grabbed the toe of Dante's left boot and gave an almighty yank to pull the man halfway off the couch.

"Get up, you sack," said Nero, as Dante rolled to his feet. "What the hell did you do all day!? Do you even know what's going on out there?"

Nero pointed furiously toward the door, and Dante frowned in that direction. "You mean the prayer group? They seem pretty harmless."

Okay, so maybe he hadn't slept the entire day. That hardly mollified Nero. "Harmless? _Harmless!?"_ What a _dick!_ Nero's right arm tingled, reacting to Dante as always. "These are my _neighbors,_ you bastard! I'm sure it seems harmless to _you!_ You can just leave and go home and not worry about it!"

A peculiar expression crossed Dante's face. "Why are you yelling at me, kid?"

"Because these are my _neighbors!"_ said Nero again. "They already treat me like I'm ... like I'm some kind of _freak._ The last thing I need is them deciding that my couch is a holy relic because you slept on it!"

That unreadable expression cleared, replaced by a gentle smile. "I'll go," offered Dante again.

"No." Nero took a step to the side to put himself between the devil hunter and the door. "I won't have you sleeping in the park while you're here."

"Hey, I'm the son of their god, right? Surely one of those folks outside will put me up."

"No," said Nero again. He took a breath, tried to calm himself. Dante hadn't done anything, and didn't actually deserve this after all; it had been Nero who had said that stupid, stupid thing outside the pizza place. "No, look. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be taking this out on you. I want you to stay."

"Taking what out on me?" Again, Dante's voice was gentle.

That was infuriating - that understanding tone, when Dante didn't understand at all - but Nero tamped it down. It was wrong of him, the entire way he'd behaved since he'd gotten home. The constant prickle of his devil bringer was grinding his nerves, but he couldn't let that turn him into a dick like Dante. He changed the subject. "I guess you have to eat my food tonight," he said, "unless you want people praying at you at the restaurant."

"That might not be so bad," said Dante, but he didn't really argue, so Nero went into the kitchen to make something.

Pasta and chicken sounded good to him, and Dante said it was fine when Nero asked, so he made that. When they sat down to eat, Nero said, "Sorry for earlier."

"Don't worry about it, kid," said Dante between bites. He was, again, eating so fast that Nero wondered that he wasn't making himself sick. Then again, he hadn't had any breakfast before Nero left, and who knew if he'd had anything to eat since. "I was probably at least as tetchy when I was your age."

Predictably, the anger flared again at Dante's words. "It's not the same!" said Nero, and he slammed his fist on the table before he could control it. He took a breath. "It's not the same," he said again. "You've always been part-demon. I haven't."

Dante paused, fork in the air, and then he set it down on his plate and leaned back. "All right," he said. "We need to clear something up here. You _have_ always been a devil, kid."

"That's bullshit," said Nero. He held up his right hand. It was still wrapped from the wrist up, but he'd taken off the glove to make dinner; the palm and fingers, and the back of the wrist were shining blue-white. "I didn't always have this!"

"Okay," said Dante agreeably. "But guess what? I don't have one at all."

Nero was about to say something scorching, but then what Dante was saying hit him, and for a moment it knocked the rage right out of him.

Holding up his hands, Dante said, "Do I _look_ like a devil to you, kid?"

It was true. Dante was tall, and he had white hair, and he was fast and strong and deadly, but just to look at him ... he could be mistaken for human quite easily. Nero had mistaken him for human at first. "What are you saying?" asked Nero, but he already knew what Dante was saying.

"You've always had some devil in you. That thing on your arm ..." Dante waved his hand at it. "That has nothing to do with it. You were born this way."

In the silence that followed a faint sound became audible. Chanting, or singing, from outside.

After a few moments, Dante continued, "You're probably descended from Sparda, in fact. The old man lived thousands of years, a lot of them in this world. Who knows how many kids he had besides my brother and I?"

Nero's vision went white, and by the time he knew what he was doing he'd stood up and slammed his cursed hand down onto the table again. "That's _bullshit!"_ he yelled.

Dante just looked at him and didn't reply, and Nero's fury retreated, leaving him with humiliation at having lost control that way.

"Sorry," said Nero again. There was a long crack in the table under his hand, although it looked like he hadn't broken any of the crockery.

"Don't worry about it." Dante stood up. "This place got a back yard?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I'm hoping my worshipers out front aren't in it. Grab your sword."

Nero checked out the kitchen window; the back yard was empty. He knew what Dante had in mind, and although he didn't think it was going to do any good he put his glove back on anyway, and then went into the front room and picked up his sword. It couldn't hurt, after all. "No guns in the neighborhood," he told the devil hunter.

"No problem."

The sun was already down, but the golden-orange glow still on the horizon provided enough light. "How do you want to ..." began Nero, but a powerful sweep of Dante's sword toward his head stopped the words short. Nero caught it on his own blade and used the momentum to help himself jump backward. He scowled; that had been a killing cut, aiming to take off his head, not a careful sparring blow.

Dante's smile was mocking, and Nero's fury exploded all over it. His rage and his body took over, hacking with little elegance but great force on Dante's broadsword, forcing the older man back. Then he was thrown back himself as Dante shoved him away. A thrust toward Nero's legs required him to parry it, and with space now between them a more conventional sword fight began.

The devil hunter's strength was tremendous, but Nero was fueled by fury and almost a match; it felt _so good_ to put his own strength into each blow, _so good_ to give in to the speed his body possessed. It even felt good when Dante would slam his sword into Nero's, and the painful shock of it went up Nero's arm.

However, Dante wasn't really trying very hard. That was became apparent to Nero when he realized that in his rage he'd over-extended himself for at least the fifth time and Dante didn't capitalize on it, but instead gave him a bit of space to recover. Nero took a step back, his breath rapid and his heart thundering in his ears. "Quit playing with me," he said.

"Am I playing with you?" asked Dante, with that smile still mocking Nero. The younger man whipped his sword into a midsection cut, but Dante's sword was there, flicking it away.

"Quit playing with me!" said Nero, and he slashed toward Dante's face, in a similar way to how Dante had started the fight. Again the attack was flicked away, but this time Dante followed it up with a counterattack, and another, and Nero found himself retreating as attack after brutal attack pounded his defenses.

He hadn't used his devil bringer yet, for the same reason he didn't want to either of them to use their guns: because he didn't want to freak out the neighbors. As Dante drove him backward, giving Nero no time at all to do anything but block each strike, he clenched his fist and had to consciously restrain the power in it.

The momentary shift of attention was a mistake. Dante's sword went low, and Nero was too slow with his parry, and an instant later pain streaked up Nero's leg.

A ripple of sound went up behind Nero as he fell to one knee, and he glanced over his shoulder; there was an audience back there.

Of _course_ the little group from the driveway had been attracted by the sound of the fight, Nero realized, and they'd come around the house to watch. The noise was a collective gasp, and a couple of them actually had their hands over their mouths, like they'd never seen someone take a sword to the knee before.

"Shit," said Nero. Probably they hadn't.

Mrs. Walker, his next-door neighbor, hurried up to him, and in absolute humiliation Nero hauled himself back to his feet. "I'm fine," he told her, then he raised his voice for the whole group. "I'm fine, it's nothing." It was a deep slash, and hot blood was pouring down his calf. It probably would have been crippling for a human, but Nero wasn't human; it was going to look horrible but he could have kept fighting with it. Nero turned to keep the injury away from Mrs. Walker, so she wouldn't be able to get a good look at it through the slice in his pant leg, or at the blood he was sure was soaking the fabric.

"Are you sure, dear?" she asked, and her gaze flicked from Nero's knee back to Dante.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Nero took a step back, and made himself not limp; this gash would heal in minutes, and he didn't really need a rumor going around that he could recover from an incapacitating injury at supernatural speed.

Nor did he need anyone to come closer. That _hunger,_ that desire to crush, to grab someone and slam them to the ground ... it was high in his blood right now.

Dante, who had moved away the moment Nero was injured, remained silent as a couple of the people in the group started to pray. Jake Sutton - who had started all of this! - walked toward him along with Deacon Harrison. _Oh, hell._ "My Lord!" said Jake.

The Deacon was probably eighty years old, but his voice was still strong. "Sir, is it true? Are you the child of Our Lord Sparda?"

Nero couldn't watch this. This was a disaster. He put a hand over his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it. "It's not like that," he said. "Jake and Helen shouldn't have paid any attention to me." He heard Dante's sword strike something and quickly looked again to see what had happened, but the devil hunter had simply driven the tip of his weapon into the ground. Held at an angle, it formed a kind of barrier between him and the Deacon.

Finally, Dante said, "Nobody's ever worshiped me before, and I don't intend that to change now."

"But, my Lord ..." began Jake, but Dante interrupted.

"Look, let's get something straight." He looked out at the group on the other side of Nero. "I'm not divine. My old man wasn't divine. Devils aren't divine." He paused, and then raised his voice. "You all know that, right? Devils are not gods."

"Our Lord Sparda had great power," said the old Deacon. "Greater than the power of the demon god. Of course he was a god himself. Only a god could defeat a god."

"I doubt Sparda told you that," said Dante.

Nero's leg already felt better, but he didn't feel like fighting anymore. Maybe Dante had been right to suggest a little workout. A lot of the fury had burned off, with only his lingering humiliation and that crawling sensation in his hand left to prick his nerves.

"I don't know what all Sparda would have wanted from you," Dante was saying, "but I know that evil follows evil. When you treat people like shit, that's evil. Part of what made Sparda different from other devils is that he could treat others like they mattered." The devil hunter looked around at the group, and then at the Deacon. "That's your advantage over the demons. Don't throw it away."

Abruptly, Nero realized that Dante was talking about _him,_ and his humiliation flared along with his anger. He didn't need _Dante_ to manage his relationships for him! He wasn't a child!

The Deacon bowed. "It shall be as you say, my Lord."

"Yeah, don't call me that," Dante told him.

"Are we done dispensing the wisdom of Sparda yet?" asked Nero, the words dripping sarcasm, and the Deacon and a couple of the other people looked shocked.

"Don't speak to the child of Our Lord Sparda that way!" said the Deacon, but Dante only laughed.

"Yeah, kid, we're done here." Dante pulled the tip of his sword out of the ground, then gave the group of worshipers a cocky wave. "Don't stay out too late, guys. It's bad for your health."

A chorus of agreement came from the group, and Nero disgustedly grabbed Dante by the sleeve and pulled him toward the kitchen door. "You asshole," he told the man once they were in the house. "Do you realize what you've done?"

"It's fine, kid," Dante said. "Do you have a towel or something?"

Nero pulled one out of a drawer and threw it angrily at the older devil hunter. "They're probably going to make it a point of the faith to not go out after dark now!"

Dante neatly caught the towel, and used it to wipe a smudge of dirt off the tip of his sword. "Maybe they'll make it a point of faith to stop throwing kids out of restaurants for being different."

"This isn't funny!" Nero walked into the front room to put his sword away, and he tried not to stomp like a petulant child but didn't quite succeed. "I have to live here, Dante! You can't just come in and screw with my life like this!"

"You don't actually _have_ to live here," said Dante softly. He followed Nero out of the kitchen, and set down his now-clean weapon, leaning it in the corner formed by the wall and the side of the couch.

"Where else am I going to go?" asked Nero.

"Well ... anywhere. It's a big world."

Any benefit Nero might have gotten from that surprisingly-energetic spar in the back yard was gone now. "I live _here,"_ he said, furious again. "I grew up here. All my friends are here!"

"What friends? I haven't heard you say word one about any friends."

"Kyrie is still my friend." Although Nero hadn't seen or heard from her in weeks. Dante waited, his expression expectant, and Nero finally said, "I have a job here. I have a _home_ here."

"You're comfortable," said Dante.

"Damn right!"

"If that's good enough for you, then it's good enough." Dante moved back into the kitchen, and a moment later Nero heard the click of silverware. Probably he was finishing his dinner. It had to be cold by now; Nero had no urge to go finish his.

Nero sat down on the couch and took off his glove, and stared at the bright glow of his devil bringer. It _was_ good enough for him. He was fine. He had a job that paid enough money to put a roof over his head and food on his table. He lived quietly, and nobody bothered him.

When Dante came back out of the kitchen, Nero said he needed to get some sleep and immediately left the room. He checked the kitchen, intending to clean up, but Dante had already done that and all of the dishes were in the dishwasher except for Nero's half-empty plate, which was on the counter with a clean plate over it. That was aggravating as hell. Nero put it into the refrigerator - no sense wasting food - and then cleaned the dried blood from his fully-healed leg and went to bed.

* * *

He was wakened the next morning by the sound of voices in the front room: Dante's, and a higher, feminine one. That must have been Trish. Nero got up and got dressed, and ran a hand through his hair to make himself look presentable before going out there.

Trish was ... beautiful. Beyond beautiful. Nero turned a little to put his body between her and his uncovered devil bringer. "Hi," he said, suddenly awkward.

"Hey, handsome." She smiled at him, and it was like the dawn.

"I'm Nero."

"I know."

That threw him. "Ahhh ..." He should be hospitable. "You want some breakfast?"

"Thanks," she said, "but I can't stick around. I'll get something on the road." She asked Dante, "Coming home after this?"

"Yeah." Dante leaned toward her and gave her a surprisingly chaste kiss on the cheek. "See you later."

Trish went to the door and smiled again, and then turned that smile on Nero and gave him a fingers-wiggled little wave. "Take care of yourselves, boys."

When she was gone, Nero asked, "That your girlfriend?"

Dante laughed. "Hell, no." He offered no more than that.

There was something on the coffee table, a pair of gauntlets that shimmered with a faint light. Nero picked them up; his right hand almost burned, and Nero dropped them before his devil bringer did something weird with them. "This that devil arm you were talking about?"

"Yep. It's time to take care of those demons." Dante cocked an eyebrow and added, "You still coming?"

"Yes," said Nero, before he could think about it too hard. "If you want me."

"Of course I do." Dante gave him a slap on the shoulder.

Both of them took showers before leaving, but Dante again refused Nero's offer to make breakfast. "I found the most fantastic little diner last time," said the devil hunter. "Terrance's. You know it?"

"Yeah," said Nero. "I'm ... actually sort of banned from there. Got into a fight with the owner once." The memory was mortifying.

Dante said, "You can come in with _me._ I'm paying, after all."

Nero called in to work and claimed to be too sick to come in, and got his old coat out of the closet, the one he'd fought in. The one he'd hunted devils in. It had been a while since he'd worn it, but the denim was soft and felt so good when he put it on. He hadn't worn his weapons out of the house in a long time, either, but he strapped the holster for his revolver onto his thigh, and the sling for Red Queen over his shoulders, with the ease of long practice; his body remembered the motions.

"Looking good," said Dante when Nero came back out of his bedroom, and the man actually gave him a thumbs-up.

"Whatever." The little compliment was nice, though, and Nero looked away.

Nero drove them to the diner, just on the other side of downtown. He felt self-conscious going in, where he knew he already wasn't wanted, so he left his sword in the car and asked Dante to do the same.

Nobody tried to stop Nero from going in, but when the waitress came over to take their orders she visibly startled at seeing him. "You know Terrance doesn't want you here," she said quietly.

"I know, Kate," Nero told her.

"He's with me," said Dante.

The waitress looked them both over, and then said, "He's in the back, so keep your head down. What'll it be?"

Dante ordered what the menu called the "tower of pancakes." Nero just asked for eggs and toast, in case he needed to make a quick getaway.

"What are we going to do when we get there?" asked Nero after Kate gave them their drinks and left to put in their orders.

"There's a ritual to open the gate. The devils will do it." Dante took a sip of milk. "They have everything they need already, except enough power to wedge the gate open."

And if, instead of leaving, the demons called more of their kind through, he and Dante would take care of it. "Sounds simple," said Nero.

"It should be. It will be a small gate, and temporary. Nothing like what was here before. Stupid people make them all the time."

That was kind of a stunning revelation for Nero. "Why?"

"Because they're stupid?" Dante laughed. "Remember what I said before, about devils being like animals in a way? Some people take that analogy a little too far, and imagine that summoning a minor devil is like buying a supernatural guard dog. It almost never works out that way. Usually the demon kills them, or if the summoner makes nice tight wards, the demon kills someone they love. Occasionally the minor devil is a vassal to a major devil, and decides to try opening a bigger gate for its master." Dante's smile turned unpleasant. "Then there are problems."

"Damn." Nero hadn't known any of that. "I thought gates were always these massive things. I reckon it's a good thing I didn't go into devil hunting."

"Nonsense. You don't have to know anything about gates to start hunting devils, just how to kill them and stay alive doing it. Believe me, you would have picked up the rest along the way."

"Maybe."

Kate brought their food, and the "tower of pancakes" was, indeed, towering. Nero couldn't imagine even trying to eat that much this early in the morning, but Dante dug right in.

"This is fantastic," said the devil hunter, rudely with his mouth full.

"Glad to hear it," said Kate, and then she turned a serious expression to Nero. "Can I talk to you a minute, Nero? Over here?"

"I thought you wanted me to keep my head down."

"Just for a minute," she said.

So Nero got up and moved a few tables away, and Kate lowered her voice. "There's a rumor going around about your friend there."

Oh, shit. This again. "People talk too much for their own good," said Nero, and he had to fight the urge to make this rumor stop by applying violence. Hitting people wouldn't help, he reminded himself.

"Is it true?" asked Kate, and she looked over toward Dante. "Is he Sparda's son?"

_Why don't you ask him that?_ Nero almost said it, but bit it back because Dante had yet to actually deny it whenever someone did ask him, and evasion convinced no one. He decided to try out Dante's own argument here. "What do you think?" he whispered to Kate. "Does he look like a demon to you?" Nero's devil bringer thought so, but Kate had no such means of detection.

"The priests always said that Sparda could make himself look like a human whenever he wanted."

"Yeah," said Nero, "but they also said his shadow was always a demon's shadow. Dante's shadow looks perfectly human to me."

Kate gave Dante a long look, but there was certainly nothing demonic about his appearance, and as Nero had said his shadow was quite ordinary. "It was just a stupid thing I said," Nero told her. "I didn't mean anything by it."

"Okay," said Kate, but Nero wasn't convinced she believed it. He went back to the table and started to eat his eggs.

Dante barely paused for the breath to say, "The proof is in my shadow?"

Of course they hadn't been quiet enough to keep a devil's child from hearing. "What did you want me to say?" said Nero.

Ice blue eyes peered at Nero from behind Dante's white bangs. "Not sure, but it wasn't a story about my shadow of all the things."

"Worked, didn't it?"

His only answer was a low chuckle.

* * *

Terrance never came out of the back, and so Nero got out of the diner without a confrontation. Twenty minutes later they were on the road again, and Dante folded his arms behind his head and looked like he was about to have another nap.

"How can you sleep so much?" asked Nero.

"What would you prefer me to do?"

"I don't know." Nero thought about putting a CD into the player, but instead he said, "What was Sparda like, anyway?"

Dante sniffed. "Depends. I always thought he was an asshole, running out on Mom and Vergil and I. Don't actually remember him."

That sounded a little familiar. "I don't even know who my parents are," said Nero, although Dante had not asked.

"Mom told us stories," said Dante. "But she was killed when we were eight."

"Where's your brother now?"

Dante paused, and asked, "Your parents dead?"

"No idea." Dante's brother must have been a sore subject for some reason. "Mom and Dad ... my adopted parents ... they said I'd been dropped on a neighbor's doorstep, like an unwanted kitten or something." Thinking about it was one of the many, many things that could make the anger rise in Nero. "No one saw who did it, or had any idea. It's a small town, everyone knows everyone, but Mom said no pregnant women became mysteriously un-pregnant without babies to show for it."

"Mmmm." The sound was noncommittal.

They drove in silence for a while, and Nero thought again about putting in a CD. Dante's eyes were closed and he seemed to be sleeping, but after ten minutes or so he spoke again.

"I was furious at Dad for a long time," he said. "He was powerful, and when you're talking about devils, power means having powerful enemies. He ran out on us, just a human woman and a couple of halfbreed babies. No way we could have resisted whatever tried to get to him through us." Another pause, not as long this time. "It was a long time before I found out why he took off."

"And that was?"

"Something was after him. He'd locked away a lot of his power, to make the barrier between the worlds." Dante's tone was casual, but Nero heard something behind it. "He probably didn't think he could take it on as he was, because it turned out he couldn't. He left because he didn't want to lead it to us."

That was a disturbing idea: something that Sparda himself couldn't defeat. "Do you think ..." said Nero, but then he stopped because that was a stupid thing to think. He wasn't actually descended from Sparda, because he hadn't been born a demon at all.

"Don't know," said Dante. "Could be." He shifted a bit, gave Nero a sideways look. "Timing would have been about right. I would have been smacking Mundus not too many years after you were born."

He went silent again, and so did Nero as the miles passed and the road turned to put the sun almost into Nero's eyes. When he glanced at his passenger Dante looked asleep again, but there was really no way to tell.

Nero didn't like the thoughts rattling around in his head now, so he eventually put in a CD and turned up the volume until the car was thumping with the music. Dante didn't even stir.

* * *

They arrived at the churchyard just after noon, and Dante brought Nero in to introduce him to the devils.

There were nine of them, small things, half as tall as Dante. Black shadows wisped off of them, like smoke but the place smelled of something dead instead of fire. They huddled together in the rear of the decrepit old church and gibbered in some language Nero didn't recognize, until Dante reprimanded them sharply to speak English.

"Sssorry, ssso sssorry, great ssson of Sssparda," they whispered, all of them the same words together, echoing one another. "You will help usss? Yesss?" _"... help usss, yesss?"_

"Killed anyone yet?" asked Dante, and the devils assured him that they had not, they'd frightened everyone away and had harmed no one. Nero could see why Dante _almost_ believed them; their thin voices were brimming with abject terror, but there was something hard in their red eyes.

Dante assured them that he would be double-checking that claim, and then said, "This is Nero. He's going to help me trash all of you and everything you hold dear if you're lying to me."

"Yo," said Nero and flipped them a wave. "I'd just as soon kill you now, so be glad you're dealing with Dante and not me."

The demons almost crawled over one another to put more distance between Nero and themselves, and that was kind of gratifying, to have these pathetic things abase themselves before him. To acknowledge the power he did have.

Dante told them to get their ritual together. They would start it at dusk, aiming to finish at midnight. A sacrifice would be required. Dante told them they could use his blood.

Nero and Dante went into the village in the meantime. "Wonder what they would have sacrificed if you hadn't agreed to help them," asked Nero.

"An animal, if they're on the up-and-up," said Dante, and he didn't need to elaborate on what they would have used if they were lying.

Nobody in Carmen knew Nero on sight, which was weirdly relaxing. He wasn't banned from any of the businesses, and people actually smiled at him in greeting. He and Dante had lunch at a patio café overlooking the water, and there was zero chance of Nero being told to leave before the meal was over.

Dante paid. Nero let him.

They talked about devils a little, and Nero was stunned to learn that Trish was a devil herself. He hadn't noticed; his devil bringer was lit up all the time by Dante's presence, and other demons didn't seem to make much additional impact.

"How can you partner with one of them?" asked Nero, carelessly, and then he flustered when Dante laughed. "Sorry."

"It's okay," said Dante. "I get it."

"Do you ever hang out with people who _aren't_ demons?"

"Sure, but only the interesting ones." Then Dante winked at him. "And only the interesting demons."

After lunch they went to visit the village mayor, who had hired Dante to get rid of the devils in the churchyard. He _did_ recognize Nero, and he started to say something but Dante interrupted. "Nero's my partner in this one," said the devil hunter, and there was nothing more the mayor could say about it.

The mayor did verify that no one had been harmed by the devils in the two days since Dante had last been there. He expressed some confusion as to why they weren't dead already, and Dante didn't fill him in. "They'll be gone by morning," Dante told him. "One way or another."

"So, do you believe them now?" asked Nero, as he and Dante walked away from the mayor's office.

"Almost."

With the rest of the day to kill they just walked around the village. It wasn't that big; a person could see all there was to see of it in an afternoon, so that was what they did. Dante found a soda shop that would make him a strawberry sundae, and Nero had to chuckle at that.

"You," he said. "A strawberry sundae." The son of Sparda.

Dante smiled. "It's nice to see you laugh, kid."

"Screw you." But Nero realized it _felt_ nice to laugh, too.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, they made their way back to the churchyard.

There were more shadows gathered there than were natural, and the hair on the back of Nero's neck prickled when the sound of a faint, distant wailing arrived on the breeze. Dante must have heard it, but he didn't react so Nero made himself not react, either. Probably just the demons trying to keep humans at bay, he assumed. It was creepy enough for that.

Inside the ruined church, the demons had laid out a circular array of some kind, marked on the floor with what looked like charcoal and sprinkled with lines of dust, blue and white and green. Candles were placed around the perimeter, not yet lit.

"Ssson of Sssparda," they whispered, and they swarmed to the doorway when Dante and Nero entered. "We are almossst ready, sssee?" _"... almosst ready, sssee?"_

"Back," said Nero, drawing his sword and holding it between himself and the devils. "Not so close."

"It's fine," said Dante, and he put a hand on Red Queen to push it down. Then he leaned near Nero and said, very quietly, "Stay near the door, be ready."

"Right." Nero leaned against the doorframe, the tip of his sword on the floor.

The demons began their ritual precisely at dusk. Dante placed the glowing gauntlets in the center of the circle, and the shadowy figures positioned themselves around the magic array, their long, spidery fingers interlinked. The chant that rose from their thin throats was in that weird language, the words hissing and sliding over one another, not quite synchronous. After a few minutes, the devils began to sway, the circle of their linked hands turning, back and forth.

Dante had his own sword in his hand, and he stood outside the circle of demons with a hard frown on his lips and narrowed eyes, watching them work.

That was it for a long time: sibilant chanting, writhing demons, fading light, the stench of decay, nothing more. Nero started to get really bored, but Dante had told him to stay ready, and Dante certainly looked fully alert and ready for anything.

About an hour in the air started to move through the church, a soft circling breeze, and shortly after that the candles flared to life by themselves. The abrupt surge of light in the darkened church startled Nero, but the devils did not change their chant. Their eyes were closed, Nero saw now; they sang their inhuman words and swayed as though enraptured.

Dante rolled up his sleeve and raised his sword, and cut his forearm on its edge, then flicked his arm to splatter the blood across the charcoal lines over the demons' heads. The white dust immediately ignited, and the hair stood up on the back of Nero's neck again when he saw that the lines of flame were shifting, moving.

"What the hell," he murmured to himself. Why was Dante _assisting_ with this ... this unnatural thing?

The chant changed tenor, becoming higher ... perhaps more eager. Dante moved around the circle, and he glanced up at Nero for a moment with a questioning frown. Nero just shrugged, not knowing what the look meant.

The breeze grew and so did the stench, and the candle flames flickered. The squirming lines of fire that had been white dust extinguished, and Dante cut his arm again and threw more blood into the circle. The blue dust ignited into lines of blue flame.

Nero felt, quite suddenly, like he couldn't get enough air. He could breathe and inhale without a problem, but it was as though the air were devoid of oxygen. He struggled with it for a minute or so, almost panting in an effort to catch his breath, but it didn't help and only served to make him feel lightheaded as well.

The air seemed to shimmer over the circle, quaver like a fever.

This was terrible, it was _wrong._ It was all wrong, like the world was turning itself inside-out, like something sick and infectious was growing inside the church. Nero began to feel nauseated, and he put a hand to his stomach, then over his mouth.

This was wrong.

He turned and opened the door behind him, needing to get out of there, needing some air to breathe, needing _to get out of there._

It was cooler outside, and fully dark; Nero hadn't realized how overheated the church had become, how much it reeked of dead things. He closed the door and leaned against it, looking up at the starry sky and drinking in long breaths of the cool air.

Here, at least, the world was right-side-out.

He should go back in, he knew. He could hear the soft chanting, faintly, through the door, and the light of the candles and the blue flames shone through the stained glass windows and made weird patterns on the grass. He should go back inside, back in with the thick miasma of magic and the small shadowy devils and their creepy chant. Dante had told him to stay ready, and he needed to stay ready, but when he touched the door handle his hand was shaking, and he couldn't make himself open the door.

What was going on in there was not of this world, uncanny, wrong, and Nero wanted no part of it.

Why was Dante _helping_ them? That was one thing Nero couldn't comprehend. So what if they were relatively harmless? They were demons, and killing demons was what a devil hunter did. It was how Dante made his living. Why wasn't he doing it now?

The whispery sounds from within the church rose a bit in volume, and the shade of light thrown onto the grass went sickly green. Nero had to go back in there. He had to. He put his hand on the door handle again, but again he couldn't turn it.

Dante had told him to stay ready, but Nero couldn't even walk back into the building. He leaned against the door, and he trembled, and he rested his head against it and he steadied himself a little with the sword still in his hand, and he couldn't go back inside.

The ritual took another hour to complete, and Nero listened to it through the door. The chanting rose again, but never became loud; the light became brighter, went darker, brighter again, turned orange-red. The door began to shake with whatever was going on in there. Nero needed to go back in, needed to be ready ... He knew he couldn't do it. Kill demons, yes. Stand by while a demon gate was opened ... apparently that was beyond his power.

It made him feel cowardly and guilty and terrible and every kind of awful, but he couldn't do it. He covered his face with his demon hand, and kind of wanted to die.

At midnight the chanting stopped. The light in the windows went out. The door ceased to shake. Nero crouched and cursed himself.

No sounds of violence had filtered through the door at any point, so Nero assumed it all went as planned and Dante hadn't had to kill anything. Any moment now Dante was going to come out, and he'd ask why Nero had retreated, and maybe despise him and his weakness. Nero certainly despised himself.

Footsteps creaked just inside the church, and Nero stood up. He wouldn't face Dante on his knees like that.

"Hey, kid," said Dante. He had his sword over his shoulder and the gauntlets in one hand, the faint glow of them like foxfire in the darkness. "Want to go collect our fee?"

"I didn't do anything," said Nero, humiliated, waiting for recrimination.

It was hard to read in the darkness, but Dante's frown looked puzzled. "You watched the door, didn't you?"

Holy shit. Dante thought Nero had come outside _on purpose._ For a moment of confusion, Nero wavered between letting Dante think that and saving face, or admitting that he'd _ran._ Then he said, again, "I didn't do anything."

Dante gave Nero a friendly clout on the shoulder and started toward the car. "Kid, I literally couldn't have done this without you. If you hadn't given me a place to stay and let me borrow your car, this would have gone very differently. And you _did_ watch the door."

"That's not how it happened," said Nero. "I ... I just couldn't stay in there, for some reason."

Dante opened the car door and examined his forearm in the light; there was a rusty mark that flaked away when he rubbed it. He rolled his sleeve back down and said, "It happens to the best of us. At least you stuck by the door like I told you and didn't run for the hills, like I did the first time." He put his sword into the back seat.

Nero slowly approached the car, trying to digest that bit of information. "I ... guess," he said.

"Don't sweat it, kid. Gates to the demon world will turn anyone's stomach."

It was just after midnight, now, but Dante insisted on collecting his payment from the mayor immediately, so Nero drove them back into the village. He stayed in the car while Dante banged on the mayor's front door until someone came to answer it, and then pushed his way inside.

It took a little time for Dante to finish his business in the mayor's house, and Nero spent that time trying to convince himself that he hadn't behaved in a shameful way back at the church. It _felt_ like he had, but Dante didn't seem to see it that way. Surely Dante had known how that was supposed to go down. He'd told Nero to stay by the door.

_And stay ready,_ Nero told himself. He'd failed on that bit.

Fifteen minutes later, or thereabouts, Dante came out of the house and got into the car. "All set?" Nero asked.

"All set."

Nero got them back on the road; it would be nearly morning by the time they got back to his place, but he wasn't tired. Once they were on the coast road, Dante pulled a wad of cash out of his coat and counted off five of the bills, and offered them to Nero.

"What's that?" asked Nero.

"Your cut, kid."

"I didn't do anything," said Nero, yet again. He turned his eyes back to the road and didn't take the bills. "And I didn't come along for money."

But Dante scoffed, and said, "You put me up at your place, loaned me your car, and you watched the door like I asked."

"I didn't," said Nero, shame burning through him. "I couldn't stay in there."

Again Dante dismissed this. "You didn't run and you didn't puke, and that's more than anyone could say about me the first time I saw a gate opened."

Nero didn't know if that was true, or if Dante was just saying it to be kind. Either way, it made him feel a tiny bit better.

"Take it," said Dante, waving the money again, and Nero took it this time. Then Dante leaned back and apparently went straight to sleep.

Nero did start to get tired about halfway back to Fortuna City; Dante had given him a lot to think about today, but Nero's pondering wasn't really going anywhere. He put a CD in the player to keep himself awake, and again Dante didn't complain or even give any indication that the music had woken him.

* * *

"Get up," Nero said, and he gave Dante a shove as he pulled into the driveway. "We're here."

The older man roused immediately, alert in an instant. "What time is it?"

"Almost seven." Nero shut off the engine. He'd been up for more than twenty-four hours now, and he needed some sleep, but he needed to know something first. "When are you ... planning to leave?"

"When do you want me to leave?"

Nero wasn't sure what that question meant. "The first ferry to the mainland on Saturdays is at eight," he said.

"You want me to be on it, kid?"

Why was that Nero's decision? "I don't know why you'd stick around here," he said, more confused than anything else.

Dante stretched, and there was an audible crack. "No reason, if I'm not wanted. But maybe you don't mind having me around for another day or two."

None of this made sense to Nero, but he _did_ sort of like having Dante around. Maybe the devil hunter just wanted a vacation or something. "Sure," he said. "I don't mind."

They went into the house. Nero was too tired to make anything before going to sleep, but when he went to the fridge to get some apple juice he saw the covered plate with his leftover dinner from the day before yesterday. It would have been better reheated, but Nero wasn't up to that; he ate the congealed pasta cold, and it was delicious.

He remembered the little spar - more than a spar, really, the kind of fight he could only have with an opponent that wasn't human - that had interrupted dinner. That hadn't ended well, but it had been ... not fun, exactly, but definitely something he'd needed, without even knowing he'd needed it.

Then he remembered how very not-well that fight had ended. Nero took himself to bed and went to sleep on that aggravation.

When Nero woke in the early afternoon, there were worshipers on the lawn again. Dante was already up, and had ordered pizza.

"Didn't we just have pizza?" asked Nero, but he took a piece anyway when it was offered.

"Pizza is nature's perfect food," said Dante.

Faint sounds were audible from the group outside, and when Nero checked through the window it seemed to him like there were more of them. "You have to do something about this," he told Dante.

"What do you expect me to do?"

"I don't know." Nero folded his pizza and took a bite. "Something. Tell them you're not Sparda's son."

"I won't lie to them, kid."

"I don't know, then. Tell them Sparda's dead and this whole religion was a crock from the start." Then Nero thought of something, and said, "Sparda _is_ dead, right?"

Dante put his arms on the back of the couch. "Yeah. He's dead."

The devil hunter had said something about that on the drive to Carmen, about something that had been more powerful than Sparda. It had to be a devil - no _human_ could have even matched Sparda - and wasn't that an unpleasant thought?

"The thing that killed him," said Nero, uneasy. "Do you know if it's still out there?"

There was no response for a long moment. "I do know," said Dante eventually. "It isn't."

"What happened to it?"

"I sent it back where it came from. It will be decades, at least, before it can break through the barrier again."

Nero stared. "You. _You_ defeated something that was more powerful than _Sparda?"_

Dante held up his hands defensively. "Hey, don't say it like it was easy."

Unbelievable! "Sparda destroyed the armies of hell!" said Nero. "You're saying _you_ are more powerful than _that?"_ He scratched the back of his devil bringer, uneasy.

"I seem to recall a punk-ass brat of a kid who wasn't doing too badly against the armies of hell himself, not two years ago."

Nero scowled, feeling like Dante was condescending to him in some way, although there was nothing in the man's words or tone to prove it. "That was different," he said.

"How was it different?"

"I didn't have any choice in that." Nero looked out the window again. Those people out there, transferring their worship from Sparda to Dante. Was Dante just bragging, or was that maybe justified?

He had no idea why a person like Dante would bother bragging. Damn.

"That's bullshit," Dante was saying. "You had a choice."

"No, I didn't."

"You _did,"_ Dante insisted. "You could have walked away. You could have left people to die."

"I couldn't do that," said Nero. Even if his friends and family hadn't been under threat, there was no way he could have just _left,_ not when he knew he could do something about the situation. Just leave people to die? He was insulted by the very suggestion.

"Choice," said Dante, "is a human trait. Choice is what puts humans above the devils. Humans can choose to be compassionate. Humans can choose to love." A pause, and then he added, "You _chose_ to step into harm's way, to protect those weaker than yourself. You chose to care. You chose to love."

"Whatever." Nero had _chosen_ to fall in love? That was utter nonsense. He wouldn't have _chosen_ that, especially after he turned into a demon. His love had been selfish; Kyrie had suffered for it.

"When Sparda chose to care about humans, he became something more than a devil," said Dante. "Something both, and neither. In between. Like me, and like you."

_We're the same, you and I._ Nero hadn't believed it the first time Dante had said that, and he didn't believe it now. "I was born a human being, Dante," Nero said. "I didn't turn into a demon until I was attacked by one and got _this_ thing." He made a rude gesture with his shining devil bringer. Dante didn't reply, just gave him a _really, now_ kind of look, and Nero turned again toward the window.

Something had to be done about the people out there. Nero decided to try something out; even if it didn't work he'd be able to get his mind off this idea that he'd always been part-demon, at least for a minute.

"Where you going?" asked Dante as Nero headed for the door, but Nero just slammed the door behind him.

The folks on the sidewalk looked hopeful when the door opened, but the hope vanished when they saw that it was Nero. The Deacon wasn't there, Nero saw. That was good luck. He didn't think he'd have a chance talking theology with the Deacon.

He stuck his demon hand into his pocket and approached them. "Hey, guys. This friend of mine, it's not what you think. Can't you just go home?"

"He is Our Lord Sparda's son," said Janice Miller, from two streets over.

"He's the guy who shot His Holiness in the face," said Nero. "Don't you remember that? You were there." He looked at the rest of them. "You were all there! Don't you remember that?"

For an instant, a couple of them looked doubtful. Then Jake Sutton - damn him - said, "That was obviously Our Lord's will. His son wouldn't have done that if it had not been Lord Sparda's will."

Shit. "Sparda is _dead,"_ Nero told them. "He doesn't have any will, because he's dead."

"He will return if we need him," said Jake, and a couple of the others began to pray again.

"No," said Nero. "He won't. He's _dead,_ and Dante wasn't acting on his will when he killed His Holiness right in front of everyone. I don't know how you can pray to him when you saw him covered in His Holiness's blood!"

"You're speaking blasphemy now," said Jake, but his tone was kind. "Your faith has always been weak."

Before Nero could say something really regrettable to that, he heard the front door open again. "My admirers!" said Dante. He sounded _delighted._

"Get back in the house," Nero told him, but Dante ignored him completely.

"Stop with your blasphemy, Nero," said Helen Sutton.

_No violence._ Nero had to remind himself that it was bad to hit people to shut them up, because he might have a hard time stopping.

Still, it gave him an interesting, and not entirely disagreeable, feeling to watch these ordinary, weak humans apply such adoration to the powerful creature who had just come out of the house. Would Nero have objected this much if it had been Sparda, instead of Dante? He wasn't sure he had an acceptable answer to that.

_Kneel, mortals._ Nero had to swallow the words.

"Blasphemy?" said Dante. "Let's not discuss blasphemy, okay?"

"Of course, my Lord," said Helen, and she immediately folded her hands into a pious prayer.

Damn him. "Dante, this isn't helping," said Nero, but he was again ignored.

"Tell me about this religion you got," said Dante to the group.

Of course they were more than happy to comply. Dante moved back to the house and sat down on Nero's front steps, and the Fortuna faithful gathered around and recited catechism for him. Nero parked himself against the wall of the house, off to one side, growing more and more annoyed. This wasn't helping!

"You really think Sparda was here," said Dante thoughtfully. "On this island, being God or whatever." They assured him that he was; that was one of the central tenets of the faith, after all, that Sparda was bodily present on Fortuna and handed everything down himself.

"And now you're here," said Helen Sutton. "My Lord."

"I'm not staying," said Dante. "And I'm not giving you new laws or anything." When a couple of the worshipers asked why not, he said, "Not my place. Wasn't really Sparda's place, either, but he seemed to have a thing about that."

Now _that_ was blasphemy of the highest order, and Nero took a vicious satisfaction in the scandal that wrote itself across their faces. Dante wasn't finished, though. "You folks shouldn't be taking your laws from devils. Not even from Sparda. Humans shouldn't let devils rule them."

"But ... Sparda ..."

"What did Sparda save you from?" asked Dante. "If not from devils as your overlords? Then you go and make a devil your overlord." He held up a hand at the protests, and they stopped. "I know, I know, he was charming and kind and noble and all that shit. He apparently charmed the pants off of Mom, literally." He laughed, but nobody else seemed to find that funny. Blasphemy, all of it. Nero was starting to find this kind of cool, the child of their devil god basically spitting in the face of the faith.

"He was still a devil," Dante was saying. "Even if he didn't look like one when your ancestors were watching."

"How can you say these things?" asked Mary Beth, quietly, with horror.

"I'm a devil, too," said Dante. "It's fine to be grateful for what Dad did all those years ago, and I always accept payment for my services. Cash only, no checks, no credit." He flashed a grin, but only for an instant. "Gratitude and worship are really different, and you need to not mix them up, especially with devils."

Judith stood up. "You cannot say these things about Our Lord Sparda," she declared.

"That," said Dante, "is the problem with this island in a nutshell."

* * *

Once all the worshipers were gone (for good this time, Nero hoped), and he and Dante were back in the house, Nero said, "That may have been kind of funny, but I bet nobody will sell you pizza tonight."

"That's fine," said Dante. He sprawled out on the couch again. "I should probably get going in the morning."

A hard little spot developed in Nero's throat, and he flipped the deadbolt on the door. "Thought you were going to hang around as long as I gave you my couch."

"I wanted to take care of those assholes for you. Just had to figure out how."

"Oh." Nero doubted anyone would try praying at Dante again. This wasn't going to do his own reputation any good, of course, but everyone already thought he was a dangerous freak anyway so no harm done, either. "Well. The Sunday ferry starts at noon."

There was no immediate response, and when Nero turned Dante was giving him a peculiar look. "What?" he asked. "I'll drive you, don't worry."

"You happy here, kid?"

The question was not entirely unexpected. "I live here."

"That's not what I asked."

Nero knew that; he looked away. "It's the only answer you're going to get."

He went into the kitchen, since he'd had only the one slice of pizza since waking up and Dante had apparently eaten the rest. He kind of wanted to get away from Dante for a moment, but he wasn't exactly disappointed when the other man followed him and leaned against the doorframe to block Nero in.

"I live here," Nero told him again.

"What's that mean?" asked Dante. "That you live here. What's that mean?"

"It means I live here." Did he want to spend the time making an actual meal? Nero decided that no, he didn't; he opened a loaf of bread and dropped two slices in the toaster.

"Does it mean you _have_ to live here?"

"I'm not like you." Something inside Nero stirred, not for the first time, and _wanted_ to be like Dante. He pushed it down.

Dante crossed his arms, and said, "Kid, nobody said you need to be like me. I just asked if you're happy here. You don't look happy."

Nero watched the toaster and said nothing.

After a long pause, Dante said, "I wouldn't have taken this job if it hadn't been on Fortuna. I would have farmed it out. This was a hell of a trip for weak little devils and not a lot of money."

And he didn't even kill the devils. Nero felt his hands clench into fists, and was unable to stop it. "Disappointed?" he asked, bitter.

Dante sighed. "Kid, if you looked happy, living in a quiet neighborhood and working a normal job ... I would have been hella surprised, but hey, whatever bangs your hammer. It's pretty clear your hammer is not being banged here."

"What do you want me to say?" Nero forced himself to turn around and face the older man. "That this whole town thinks I'm bad news? Guess what? They're right!"

"Are they." It wasn't a question.

The toast popped, and Nero started to butter it. "You can't just come in here and see me for three days, and think you know everything about me, and about what happened."

"What _did_ happen?"

Nero wanted to punch him in the face, for sounding so _understanding._ "I have ... this temper," said Nero. "And it turns out that having a temper when you have the strength of a demon is a recipe for disaster." He bit into his toast.

"Is that really all?"

"You think that isn't enough?"

Dante again did that thing where he just looked at Nero, like he knew there was more to it and was waiting for it to be volunteered. It was so aggravating, because for some reason he was always right.

"I hurt some people," said Nero, when the silence had become damning.

"I figured that," said Dante. "What I'm trying to find out is why you stayed here after that happened."

Now it was Nero's turn to stare. "This is my _home,"_ he said.

"And?"

"And it's my home!"

"There are a lot of places that could be your home," said Dante, and his voice was hard now. "There are a lot of things out there that you could hurt, and it would be okay to do it. The devils might be mainly gone from this island, but there are always more of them, somewhere."

"You think I haven't thought of that?" demanded Nero. "You think I'm stupid?"

"Then what is it that's holding you here?"

"This is my home," said Nero, yet again, because it was the only answer he had. "I live here. I've always lived here."

"... I see."

"No, you don't." Nero was quite angry now. How dare this man judge him this way? "You don't know anything, so stop pretending like you do."

"I know what it's like to be a devil among humans."

"Whatever."

Dante wasn't finished. He moved to the kitchen window and looked out into the back yard. "They're so ... delicate," he was saying. "So soft. You squeeze them even a little bit and they break. They don't heal very fast, and they almost never heal completely." His voice had gone quiet. "I always have to be so careful around them. Sometimes I want to bite them, or make them kneel, and beg. It would be so easy."

That stopped Nero cold, because it sounded eerily familiar. Dante _did_ know what it was like. Of course he knew - he'd always been a demon. (Not like Nero, who had been born human, he knew he had.)

"That's gross," said Nero, but there wasn't as much revulsion in the words, or in him, as there should have been.

"I know." This time the one looking away was Dante, still turned to gaze out the window. "They're almost completely defenseless to devils. To us. The only thing that really protects them from me is me. That's a choice I make, not to harm them, or control them. Some days that choice is harder than others." He looked toward Nero, then, and his smile was thin. "It's easier when you know them and like them. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Shut the hell up," said Nero, but he could put no force behind it.

"It's delicious when some stranger looks at you with terrified awe, isn't it?" said Dante. "Bit of a downer when it's someone you love."

"You're an asshole. You know that?"

"I'm a devil. What did you expect?"

What _did_ Nero expect? He'd daydreamed, over and over, about somehow getting back in touch with the older hunter, and in them Dante had been so understanding and so sympathetic. Now he was faced with the real Dante, and he was being understanding and sympathetic, and it was _enraging._ "I don't know."

"You can make a home for yourself anywhere, kid," said Dante. "You can come to like and even love at least a few people wherever you go."

"What if I don't?" asked Nero, and the words came out quietly, and with a very familiar fear. "What if I go batshit on someone, or ..." Or worse. He couldn't say it. _Kneel, mortal._

"You won't, if you learn how to manage it. Managing it doesn't mean pretending it's not there, or making yourself miserable on purpose."

"I'm not doing it on purpose," said Nero, but he knew there was some truth to that. After the things he'd done here ...

"Come back with me," said Dante.

An immediate refusal died on Nero's lips, because he'd wished and hoped and longed for an invitation like that, and his hope and longing did not want him to refuse. Nero overcame that. "I can't," he said.

"Why not?"

"I have responsibilities here."

Dante gave a barking kind of laugh. "Yeah, I can see that. Responsibilities like sitting back while devils take up in a church on the other side of the island."

That was unfair! "I didn't know they were there!"

"Exactly." Dante crossed his arms and leaned back against the counter, an infuriatingly casual pose. "They called _me,_ instead of you. They don't think of you as a devil hunter. You don't even call yourself one."

Nero picked up his half-eaten toast and looked at it, then started to eat the rest of it. What could he say to this? Nothing. "I signed a lease," he said, probably the weakest response available.

"Pfft. What does a lease mean to a demon?"

This was so tempting. So tempting. It would solve all of Nero's problems in one fell swoop ... which meant it was way too good to be true. "I can't," he said again.

"You can," said Dante. "If you want to."

So tempting. "What would I do?" Nero asked. "How would I even get there? I don't have a ton of money, and I've never lived outside Fortuna."

He wanted _so much_ for Dante to offer to help him with those logistical problems, and the devil hunter did not disappoint. "Don't worry about that. I can put you up for a while. You can do whatever you want. We have a port back home, if you're really attached to working on the docks."

"Funny," said Nero, because it wasn't.

He went back to the kitchen window. Could he do this? Leave everything - everyone - that he knew behind? Leave Kyrie?

_She'll be better off without you._

Nero felt like he was standing on the edge of a precipice, looking out over a formless void. What would be at the bottom, if he stepped off into it?

"I really want you to come back with me," said Dante.

"Why?" Nero expected Dante to say something about wanting him to be happy, or some similar bullshit.

"I can always use another hand," said the devil hunter. "To take the shit jobs."

"Asshole," said Nero.

* * *

Dante told him to take nothing he couldn't carry. "Anything else will just be a burden," the man said. Nero packed a duffel with clothes, and a few other things like his razor. He would wear his weapons.

He debated a couple of items that Kyrie had given him: a small figurine, some books, an extremely nice coat. He took the coat.

Neither his landlord nor his boss was pleased to be called early Sunday morning, so that Nero could quit his job and break his lease, and Nero found himself trembling a little at the end of the second call. There it was. Ties were now cut. This wasn't a point of no return by any means - he could get another job, find another place to live - but he'd never before stepped off into the unknown this way.

When he started to wrap up his arm in preparation for leaving the house, Dante stopped him. "You're a devil, kid. Own it."

Nero drove them to the ferry, and they got out once the car was parked on the ferry's vehicle deck. Many people took the Sunday ferry, but not very many of them were able to ignore the two silver-haired, well-armed men leaning against the railing, and Nero found himself concealing his devil bringer in the tail of his coat.

When Dante caught him at it, he said, "Own it, kid."

"Easy for you to say," Nero told him. "You don't look like a demon at all."

Dante cocked a crooked smile and leaned closer. "Do you want me to?"

"No!"

The breeze was crisp and cool, and it looked like thunder on the horizon but the sky overhead held only a few scudding clouds. Nero put his hand to his stomach; there was a nervous flutter there. He was really going to do this, wasn't he? "I've never been off Fortuna before," he said.

"There's a time for everything," said Dante. "This is your time to get your ass out of this dump."

"I suppose." Nero turned around, kicked back against the railing and watched the people boarding the ferry. Humans, all of them. Delicate, fragile things, just as Dante had said. Easy prey for almost any devil. There were no more devils on Fortuna, though ... now that Nero was leaving.

Yes, this was for the best. If only his nerves would believe it.

Dante slung an arm across Nero's shoulders. "C'mon," he said. "Smile! This isn't a funeral!"

"I know."

"If you want, when we get home I'll set you up with Trish."

Nero tried to elbow him in the gut, but Dante spun away before the blow could land. "You're such a prick!" said Nero, aggravated.

"Yep. I am."

This was one prick, however, that was safe from Nero's fury. Nero whipped his sword off his back and said, "I'm going to beat the crap out of you."

"Oho!" said Dante, drawing his own. "A challenger presents himself!"

This was going to freak the other passengers, but Nero couldn't bring himself to care. Nevertheless ... "No guns," he said.

"No problem."

The horn blared, the signal that the ferry was preparing to cast off. Nero leveled his sword at Dante and said, "You drive me crazy."

"I got you smiling, though."

And, Nero realized that he was.


End file.
